Sunny Day Draws Throngs to Beaches; Wind Whips Up Dust : Weather: The pleasure is marred by two quakes, but no damage or injuries are reported. Surfers welcome swells of three to five feet.

Drawn by a cloudless sky and unseasonably hot weather, Ventura County residents flocked to beaches and parks Sunday, celebrating the apparent end to a short but stormy winter.

Temperatures that hit the upper 80s across the county were accompanied by whipping winds, which kicked up waves along beaches and blew dust across farmland in Oxnard and Camarillo.

The pleasure of the hot spell, welcomed by county residents battered by a series of rainstorms last month, was interrupted only briefly by a moderate earthquake. The magnitude 4.3 quake, centered in the Santa Monica Mountains near the Ventura County-Los Angeles County line, hit at 1:24 p.m.

Caltech seismologists said the moderate tremor was not an aftershock of last year’s Northridge quake.

It was followed 1 1/2 hours later by an aftershock with a magnitude of 3.7, according to Caltech. No injuries or damage were reported in either temblor.

The only weather-related damage in the county Sunday stemmed from early-morning Santa Ana gusts of up to 35 m.p.h.

The Oxnard Fire Department responded to several calls of downed power lines. On Bard Road in south Oxnard, a fire crew watched as one line crackled and flashed after wind knocked a tree limb onto it.

“It goes with the territory when the winds kick up like this,” Oxnard Fire Capt. Rod Megli said. “We make sure no one gets injured; we stand by until the power company can come out and repair it.”

The high winds were also blamed for pushing two pleasure boats into the breakwater in Channel Islands Harbor. A sailboat and motor craft suffered minor damage before Coast Guard and Harbor Patrol boats could tow them back to the harbor.

Swells of three to five feet tossed boaters around, but they were welcomed by surfers and other beach-goers.

“It’s unbelievable out there,” said Ken Skov of Oxnard, who spent the day surfing at Silver Strand Beach. “I’ve been surfing and swimming here all morning, and I don’t want to leave. It’s too beautiful.”

David Medina of Silver Strand read and basked in the sun all morning on the hood of his white Ford pickup.

“This is the perfect time of year to be out,” Medina said. “The weather is great, and it’s too soon for the tourists, so the beaches aren’t too crowded.”

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In Ventura, beach-goers spent the day combing through the driftwood that stacked up on the sand after spilling from the Ventura River during last month’s rains.

And at the recently restored Hueneme Pier, anglers Linda Powers and her 8-year-old daughter, Makenna, showed up with their fishing gear.

“We probably won’t catch much,” Powers said. “But we’re just here to enjoy the sun and the ocean.”

At Conejo Creek Park in Thousand Oaks, Fred Greenstein of Oak Park and his daughter, Brooke, 9, listened to drummers and soaked up the outdoors in the shade of a giant oak tree.

“I came out here from New York 15 years ago,” Greenstein said. “I look around at the mountains and the blue sky, and I think I know why I came out here.”

Meteorologists from the National Weather Service in Oxnard said the warm weather is expected to continue today and Tuesday, high winds included.

“We’ll see highs in the 80s until late Tuesday, when we’ll start to see increasing high clouds,” meteorologist Brad Fugii said. “The warm winds will continue as well, especially near the mountain passes.”